My print column this week examines the hype around Andy Murray’s earning power and how it expanded with his win in the Wimbledon final over Novak Djokovic on Sunday. The hype preceded the win: Two covers that appeared side by side at a newsstand in Wimbledon village the day Murray won the title suggested his becoming the first British man to win the Wimbledon singles title would be worth £60 million (about $90 million) or £200 million, respectively.

Many in the sports-marketing industry were skeptical of the big numbers. “Whenever there’s a big success in sport, everybody wants to clamor around a quoted figure,” said Rupert Pratt, managing director of Generate, a London-based sports- and entertainment-marketing agency. Read More »

My print column examines the approach taken by Kenneth Feinberg, who is administering the fund made up of charitable donations for Boston Marathon bombing victims, the latest in a string of victim funds he has run on a pro bono basis.

Feinberg is a lawyer, though he said the main reason he is chosen to run a fund is that he ran the previous one. “With what I do in these programs, I’d be better off with a divinity degree,” he said in an interview. Read More »

My print column examines ubiquitous city cost-of-living rankings, which place the world’s urban centers by how expensive they are. Though these rankings usually are reported as if they are universal, they are based on the spending habits of a tiny sliver of the population: expatriates at an executive level who take their spending habits with them around the globe.

“The purpose is to help companies who are moving staff to work in other countries to know how much they should pay assignees so they’re not losing out — to make sure they’re no better or no worse off by going to another country to work,” said Steven Kilfedder, ECA International‘s London-based cost-of-living manager. Read More »

My print column examines mixed opinion from economists about the efficacy of odd-even rationing, a system put in place to reduce long waits at gas stations in the New York City metropolitan area after superstorm Sandy shut down some stations and cut the supply chain to others. The system, a reprisal of one used in some parts of the U.S. to deal with the shortage fueled by the oil embargo by Arab nations in the 1970s, allows cars with license plates whose last digit is even to refill on even-numbered dates, and odd plates on odd dates.

“I honestly doubt odd-even was having any kind of impact,” said Warren Powell, professor of operations research and financial engineering at Princeton University. “It was very hard to measure because it didn’t last very long and the situation driving it was relatively brief.” Read More »

My print column examines a debate among U.S. economists about whether seasonal adjustments are working as they should, filtering out the usual month-to-month variation in economic indicators — or whether they’ve been distorted by the recent recession, and are in turn distorting economic figures.

The debate can’t be easily settled because there is no direct way to measure seasonality. It is a feature of the economic data from which it is being removed, and different software — and different users of that software — will come up with different calculations of seasonal adjustments. Furthermore, adjustments vary depending on the indicator, and so, therefore, do any effects from the recession. Read More »

My print column this week examines estimates of economic impact from major events, including some of the big quadrennial ones this summer: the just-completed Summer Olympics in London, and the upcoming Republican and Democratic conventions in Tampa, Fla., and Charlotte, N.C., respectively.

Typically organizers of these events, or sponsors or other backers, cite specific and often large estimates of their economic impact. Some economists who have looked back at prior events say these figures are often exaggerated. Read More »